After coming so close, Rangers again feel sting of defeat

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ST. LOUIS — The Texas Rangers packed quietly, spoke quietly and said all the right things about being proud of all they’d accomplished for a second straight season.

They’d just been part of a wonderful World Series that had a bit of everything, especially close games and tension and all the things that make the sport great.

Unfortunately for the Rangers, the celebration was going on just down the hallway after the St. Louis Cardinals had won Game 7 of the 107th World Series 6-2 Friday night.

“It was a great World Series,” Josh Hamilton said. “We gave it everything we had. We have every right to be proud. It’ll be nice to come back next year and know we’ve got a chance to do it again.”

So many little things had gone wrong. First, a bullpen that had been almost perfect in the first two rounds of the playoffs struggled badly in the World Series.

Texas pitchers walked 41, a World Series record. And injuries started to catch up. Hamilton hit .241 and clearly struggled with a groin injury. Nelson Cruz hit .200, David Murphy .222.

At the end of a long season in which they spent the final 135 days of the regular season atop the American League West, the Rangers had a bad couple of days.

“Yeah, it’s pretty obvious,” Michael Young said. “The last two nights obviously stink, but time will heal. We’ll regroup, and we’ll get ready to roll again next year.”

The Rangers had returned from Texas with a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven and needed to win just one more. After blowing five leads in Game 6, they had nothing left for Game 7.

Or so it seemed.

Rangers general manager Jon Daniels disagreed with the notion that Game 6 had defeated his team twice. The Rangers twice were a strike away from winning, but were unable to close the deal.

“We got beat tonight because we got beat tonight,” he said.

The Rangers jumped to a 2-0 lead off Chris Carpenter in the top of the first inning, but the Cardinals tied it on a two-run double by World Series MVP David Freese in the bottom of the inning.

Allen Craig followed with a home run in the third inning, and the Cardinals had the lead for good. While Cardinals manager Tony La Russa got four three shutout innings from four relievers, Rangers reliever Scott Feldman gave up two runs in his first inning.

Daniels struggled to explain how a bullpen that had been so good for so long was so bad.

“You guys saw it,” he said. “It changed from one week to the next. It’s one of the things that’s hard to figure out. You can’t predict it. If the World Series were played next week, we might have a great bullpen.”

Rangers manager Ron Washington, who led his team to a second straight Fall Classic, spoke in broad terms.

“You know, sometimes when opportunity is in your presence, you certainly can’t let it get away because sometimes it takes a while before it comes back,” he said. “You know, if there’s one thing that happened in this World Series that I’ll look back on as being so close, just having one pitch to be made and one out to be gotten, and it could have been a different story. But you know, when you’re a champion, you keep fighting, and St. Louis fought. They deserve it. We certainly got our heads high. We’re going to walk proud. The Texas Rangers organization has a lot to look forward to, and we are certainly willing and able and have deep plans to meet that challenge.”

So after 40 seasons, the Rangers are still seeking a championship. But they’ll enter the offseason with the respect that comes from having won back-to-back American League pennants and from industry-wide respect for doing things right.

Washington gathered his players for a few words after the game, telling them that he believed them to be champions.

“Those guys committed themselves to get here this year and win this, and they did it,” he said. “A lot of times it’s nothing but talk, but it wasn’t talk in that Texas Rangers clubhouse. We just didn’t get it done. We got beat by a good club.”